All posts tagged Kony 2012

It’s harder to stumble into viral video fame these days. But YouTube has just released a list of the top ten videos that managed to find massive viral viewership this year.

Five years ago, when YouTube pieced together its first list of the year’s top ten videos, many were accidental home videos or amateurish films never designed for widespread consumption, said Kevin Allocca, a trends manager for the company.

With nine of the ten videos that made this year’s YouTube list coming from professional producers, making a video that appears to be an accidental hit is becoming increasingly typical. The list was released Tuesday morning.

“There are more and more people who know how to build an audience, how to use YouTube,” Allocca said. “There are companies who spend millions and millions of dollars trying to do create these videos.” Read More »

Fueled by attention from a power list of celebrities, the online campaign to raise awareness about fugitive African rebel leader Joseph Kony became the fastest-growing viral video in Web history. As the nonprofit group prepares a major rally this weekend called #coverthenight, that star power has since waned. That, in turn, has led the campaign to fade from the spotlight and spurred broader questions about whether online organizing can spur-on-the-ground action. Read More »

A co-founder of the group that produced a popular online video about fugitive African rebel leader Joseph Kony was detained by police in San Diego and hospitalized after “exhibiting bizarre behavior” while dressed only in his underwear, according to police.

Jason Russell, 33 years old, was detained Thursday afternoon in the Pacific Beach area after he was found having “kind of a meltdown,” according to San Diego police officer Thomas Broxtermann.

Mr. Broxtermann said police responded to multiple complaints variously describing a white male “running around the street in his underwear,” “naked and masturbating and screaming” and “banging his hands on the ground and screaming incoherently.” The calls complaining began around 11:30 am. Read More »

When a Poland television station reached out to Polish journalist Wojciech Jagielski for his thoughts on Joseph Kony, Jagielski thought Kony was captured or killed. “I asked what they wanted to do with Kony,” Jagielski said. “And the answer was that they wanted to show how evil he is, so I didn’t even know how to react.”

If anyone knows how dangerous Kony is, it’s Jagielski. In 2009, Jagielski published “The Night Wanderers” (Seven Stories Press), which chronicled the story of Joseph Kony and the child warriors in the Lord’s Resistance Army. Originally available in Poland and Germany, “The Night Wanderers” was published in the United States in February of this year. But it wasn’t until last week, through a 30-minute short viral film entitled, “Kony 2012” that the rest of the world was keyed into what Jagielski knew all along.

The San Diego-based nonprofit Invisible Children uploaded the film to YouTube last Monday. So far the clip has attracted more than 78 million views, many of them because of celebrities who shared the video with their followers via Twitter. Invisible Children accomplished what they set out to do: They made Kony famous.

In an interview with Speakeasy, Jagielski talked about his take on the real issues plaguing Uganda, whether “Kony 2012″ was misguided, and why Kony’s reign of terror never registered on the international radar until well after the damage was done. Read More »

KAMPALA, Uganda–A 30-minute video about the alleged atrocities of Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army has been criticized by a cross section of Ugandans.

Entitled “Kony 2012,” the film has exploded into a global Internet sensation, and focuses on allegations that African rebel leader Kony has abducted children and used them as pawns during warfare. In Uganda, the video has attracted criticism across the political spectrum for sensationalizing an old conflict that many say is more complicated than it’s made out to be.

“Both sides are guilty of massacres, but the film makers decided to concentrate only on LRA” says Norbert Mao, an opposition party leader, who appears in the film. Read More »

An Internet campaign seeking to make fugitive rebel leader Joseph Kony famous has worked. The online video about the Lord’s Resistance Army leader — who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and war crimes including murder, sexual slavery and abusing children — now ranks as the fastest-growing viral campaign in history, according to online measurement firm Visible Measures Corp. The clip sought to make Mr. Kony famous in order to spur his eventual capture. Posted to YouTube on Monday by the non-profit group Invisible Children Inc., the 30-minute video about Lord’s Resistance Army leader Mr. Kony, captured more than 70 million views by Friday morning, with more than 200 clips associated with it and more than 500,000 comments, according to Visible Measures. That’s more than three times the 20 million views it had garnered on Thursday morning. Read More »

A video campaign about a fugitive rebel leader in Africa has exploded into a viral online phenomenon, igniting debate about the group behind it and the threat posed by the rebel himself. The 30-minute video, “Kony 2012,” focuses on Lord’s Resistance Army head Joseph Kony, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and war crimes including murder, sexual slavery and using children as combatants—sometimes forcing them to kill their own parents—in Uganda and its environs for more than 20 years. The video features interviews with children in Uganda who say they are fearful of being captured and killed by the rebels. By Thursday afternoon it had generated more than 44.7 million views and over 170 related video clips from the time it was uploaded to YouTube on Monday by Invisible Children Inc., a San Diego-based nonprofit, according to online measurement firm Visible Measures Corp. Read more and watch the video after the jump. Read More »

About Speakeasy

Speakeasy is a blog covering media, entertainment, celebrity and the arts. The publication is produced by Barbara Chai and Jonathan Welsh with contributions from the Wall Street Journal staff and others. Write to us at speakeasy@wsj.com or follow us on Twitter at @WSJSpeakeasy or individually @barbarachai.